Redditors: “Gamer girls” need to stop complaining about being called sluts and whores

Yeah, why would anyone want gamer dudes to modify their behavior in any way? From Fat, Ugly or Slutty. Click image for the original post.

So the top post in the Men’s Rights subreddit for a time yesterday, with hundreds of upvotes, was a post devoted to the question: “Why should male gamers change their behavior?” Yep, apparently the sacred right of men and boys to harass women and girls on Xbox live is one of the most important Men’s Rights issues of the day. Here’s how the OP, IsItRacistToAsk, framed the issue:

[G]amers themselves (until relatively recently) were a 90% male community. This goes back really far if you count non-video-game games (like Dungeons and Dragons and the like). Now all of a sudden they’re expected to just behave differently because some girls want to join?

I’m not saying girls shouldn’t be welcome in gaming communities, I’m just comparing them to someone who shows up, uninvited, to a house party and demands everyone go out and get blue plastic cups because red offends her.

The OP’s response to harassment? Well, guy gamers regularly get called “faggot” and “n*gger,” so girls and women should just suck it up.

Yeah, it would be too much to ask to suggest that guy gamers actually stop calling each other racist and homophobic slurs as well. Because, really, how can you possibly enjoy Call of Duty without calling some guy who’s just shot you a “fag.” Seriously, gals, you need to model yourselves on the mostly straight white dudes of Reddit who really don’t mind when people call them “n*ggers” and “fags.”

The discussion (more than 700 comments worth at the moment) is about as terrible as you might expect, filled with epic shitlordery and self-congratulation and calls for the gals to “man the fuck up,” with only a handful of commenters having anything bad to say about the culture of harassment in online gaming. Indeed, most of the gamers in the conversation seem to feel proud that online gaming culture is as shitty as it is.

Some highlights:

JonLR won himself more than a hundred upvotes for this self-congratulatory assholery:

By asking to never be made fun of, they’re essentially asking for special treatment. These days, ‘gamer girls’ go on and on about wanting to be treated like everyone else, but then cry when they are?

I used to play Quake 1 online, and a lot of the players knew I was short (5’7″). I got called a fucking midget every game, haha. My asian clanmate got called a chink every game. Fat people got called fat, girl players got called sluts, everyone made fun of everyone. No one cared. It was all aimed at throwing people off their game.

What the fuck happened in the past 15 years that made it the worst thing imaginable to insult a girl in gaming? Whatever it was, it’s embarrassing to witness.

Remembering when I was the only girl in the group, it strikes me that modern gamer girls are spoiled princesses who expect to walk a path they did not forge, without ever seeing any of the dirt along the side. Those of use who played before there was internet, before there was linking between video game systems… before there were RPGs on video game systems, for that matter… we didn’t earn our place among the gaming community by whining about shit like that. You had to be able to take it, and dish back, or you took your dice and went home.

I took my dice and went home only once, and found that to be a wholly unsatisfying response. After that, I learned to eschew restraint and mouth off in kind. That was more effective, and more fun, and I think it would be the more appropriate handling of today’s gaming environment, as well.

In other words, IMO, modern girl gamers really just need to man the fuck up.

Men take the shit to make a niche, once it’s successful women want to take it over.

This is the world order, nothing new about it. I’m just glad that gamers are finally saying “No.”

Sidetracking got dozens of upvotes for suggesting that women and girls just hide their identity and pretend to be guys, because gamer girls who acknowledge their gender online are just attention whores hungry for female privilege anyway:

When anybody plays a video game, without talking, they are pretty much concealed. Nobody really knows what gender, age, etc. In real life, girls expect this privileged talking, because people want to engage in intercourse with them, however, over a video game, this privilege is gone. In order to get the privilege back they say “Hey, I’m a girl”, not knowing that this privilege is completely removed over the internet. Then they get over-sensitized when someone calls them a bad name, when they don’t realize that pretty much everyone calls anyone out over the internet.

Daysleepin83 also got dozens of upvotes for talking about the kinds of “gamer girls” he hates the most: The ones who complain and the ones who, evidently,wear no clothes.

For the most part i really don’t give two shits about what sex my opponent is.

But there are two types of “gamer girls” that really piss me off. There are those like Anita Sarkeesian who seem to bitch and nag about all that is sexist and wrong with video games. Doesn’t really offer any solution to the problems she digs up, aside from telling us we need to change. …

Then there is the second group, they don’t so much as piss me off but more like aggravate me. The sexy gamer girl. … Could she be a legitimate gamer? Sure of course she could be. I could also one day become the Pope. Till she puts some clothing on and picks up that controller i am not going to take her serious as a gamer.

The issue I have is girl gamers who have to shove down your throat. I imagine the majority just don’t give a shit and tend not to talk or if they do its not provocative. The moment I hear “hey guys” I leave, I can’t be bothered with the shit storm that comes with it.

Bottom line is women need to learn to adapt to the “environment” (environment meaning gaming community, workplace, etc.) instead of always expecting that the “environment” adapt to them and use language like “it makes me uncomfortable” to shame others in that “environment” to accommodate them at their own expense.

Throwing in the obligatory, “women” =/= all women…don’t want to offend the poor things. Oh wait, there I go accommodating again!

Yourotherusername wins points for pomposity with this response to the OP:

Well put. Like many things, the environment of gaming has it’s own language. It isn’t the language of Shakespeare or high-finance. It’s high context communication. It’s code. It isn’t (usually) to be take at face value. The problem for the people who complain, is that the marketers who attracted them to play the game, didn’t tell them how the game is played and the vocabulary needed.

If a person hangs out with a group of people not in their normal click, they need to understand that what is being said, might not actually be what was meant, and until they grasp the context, they need to keep their mouth shut if they don’t want to look like an asshole. I’d much rather ‘learn the language’ than try to change a sub-culture.

Take reddit for example. Expect masturbation jokes. Expect memes. Expect stereotypes. But in all of that, you will find that once you adapt and understand the context, it becomes more than a middle school locker room (especially in the smaller subreddits). IF you are so bold as to challenge the nature of communication on Reddit by admonishing others and trying to get them to change their way, you will be anathema, and most likely down voted to hell. The best you can do to change the language, is to be an example of what you want, and hope to flying spaghetti monster, that it catches on.

TLDR: Go with the flow or don’t go at all.

Reddit: Awful and proud of it.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Men’s Rights subreddit, someone has once again posted a link to the “The Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics,” because god forbid anyone ever say anything “shaming” about MRAs for being the shitty people they are.

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About David Futrelle

I run the blog We Hunted the Mammoth, which tracks (and mocks) online misogyny.
My writing has appeared in a wide variety of places, including Salon, Time.com, the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review and Money magazine.
I like cats.

I saw a video once — maybe it was on Cracked? Where a man and woman (both young) were gaming on, like, Xbox live or something, and the man started trash-talking the woman. She started trash talking back, and then another gamer got on – but it was another woman. And another. And another. And pretty soon, it was one man and ten women, and the women were saying to the man all of the horrible shit that male gamers usually say to female gamers, except when you reverse the genders it no longer actually has a connotation of violence so it’s ridiculous sounding.

I did a lot of tabletop gaming in my youth and arcade games. Generally, people in the arcade were busy with their game, occassionally some doofus would think I was there to be picked up.

Tabletop gaming was pretty damn civil. Usually if some guy was going to trash talk me or had it out for my character because I was a girl, hed find that he wasn’t welcome back. Had a couple major campaigns where I’d be all “hey, where’s so and so?”. I get a lot of poker faces and an explanation of “he’s busy with other stuff”. And someone would be asked if they wanted to roll up a new character of whatever class was needed.

This level of shit? That’s new to gaming. And as far as I can tell, it started with interactive online games. These same idiots woud likely be trying to get into a womans pants if it were face to face, but since its not then they pull this bullshit

I agree that it’s the anonimity that brings out this kind of behavior. I’m reminded of the early advertisements for internet services, one showing school children in America communicating with school children in Asia, the implication being that the world wide web would create world peace. Yeah, I don’t see that happening either.

This is just silly. I live with two guys. We all like video games, but vary in skill and ability (I definitely place LOWEST). We play together alot, but we don’t throw slurs at each other. I suppose ‘trash talking’ is fun, but more like self-congratulating laughing evilly when you snatch a victory away from someone or go from being the underdog to winning. I know I suck compared to them, but that’s not the point, we’re trying to entertain ourselves.

If I play a game with someone who doesn’t play games, I try to go gently and help them to do easy things. Why why why do you need to insult and belittle and demean someone to play a game with them. It’s fun to be competitive, but only when you are all friends and laughing along together. I don’t feel any camaraderie with some dude on XBOX.

@whataboutthemoonz: If clairedammit did, in fact, find the right video, I’d have to agree with you.

It was trying to be funny, but ended up falling flat. The threats came across more on the side of ridiculous and the delivery of the lines lent more weight to that.

I kinda like the idea, though: the reversal of roles. If it were done as a serious piece (maybe longer, showing the continuation of the threats over time), it could actually be a PSA against the things it is mocking. As such, the male gamer winds up looking pathetic…taken that way, it actually trivializes the threats that female gamers deal with.

2). Gamer Girls complain about representations of women, and this is highly hypocritical considering they never bother to mention that it’s equally as bad for men. For every sexy video game vixin, there’s a male cannon fodder soldier who’s a meathead that doesn’t show any emotions.

I just want to point out that when there is a male character that’s sexualized, like say Vaan from Final Fantasy XII, these same male gamers that dismiss women’s complaints totally flip their shit and call these characters “wimps” and “f*gg*ts” and complain about how their outfits are ridiculous and all other kinds of shit. So it’s obvious that they’re not nearly as thick-skinned as they claim when the tables are turned.

Even “better”, when JRPGs as a genre included those characters, not only did men freak the fuck out, but they also turned on the genre entirely and declared it “not real video gaming” and everyone who played those games “not real gamers”. Coincidentally, this also occurs to every genre when female fans of a genre become visibly equal to or greater than the male ones.

Cause if women gamers exist, then that genre of video gaming must not have been teh hardcorez unlike X genre where women are still harassed out of participating as visibly.

@Cerberus
True, I think that may be a large contributor to the whole “casual gaming” thing. “All these women nowadays all play puzzle games and simulations and all that girlie casual crap. Not like us manly men, we played Tetris and Pacman and Columns and Sim City and all those MANLY games”.

There are also male characters like Mario, Luigi, Link, etc. from some of the classic games that aren’t hypersexualized and super muscular. It’s hard to think of female game characters that would be an equivalent to Mario. The closest I can think of is Samus Aran, but even under her special suit, she’s wearing a bikini.

So to compare sexualized male characters to sexualized female characters is a false equivalence. Where are the male versions of Rumble Roses, Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball, or any of the other games that are more like Playboy than a video game?

Looking back over Phil’s comments, I’m reminded of an incident a number of years ago when I was killing time between classes at a video arcade. A boy of about 8-9 years old was having a fit/tantrum/future MRA rage about too many “girls” being in there and how he didn’t want them there. An older boy (15-16) was trying to shut him up, get him out of there, or just trying to sink into the ground. The younger boy was really upset though, and very resentful of the young women who were also killing time in the arcade. An early example of “male space” invaded by females, whom this kid apparently thought had no right to be here. Fast-forward to now, and it seems nothing has changed in the gaming world. Women are still there, and there are some (rather immature) men who are still pitching fits over it.

I, in good faith, hoped the creators had enough sense to be self-aware and that the overall point was “saying shit like this is ridiculous, and not at all related to gaming, knock it the fuck off”, although I understand how it could be taken in a variety of less-good ways.

Basically, a lot of the people on that post seem to only care about harassment when it comes to *them.* Apparently, being called a “creep” is “anti-male shaming language,” but as soon women are targeted for their gender, they’re just being “overly-sensitive.”

Fortunately, as a game designer, I rarely experience harassment in the gaming industry. I think that a lot of gamers and game developers are progressive and open-minded. Some, however, need to learn to walk in someone else’s damn shoes.

So, because people used to be abusive racist assholes and used this to enslave other people, we should totally allow it to happen today?

And because we used to think that bloodletting was the BEST WAY to cure all disease, we should throw out modern medicine?

Because we never used to use chemical birth control methods when we first became Homo Sapiens, we should never use it now, right?

And god forbid we use any cooking methods that don’t involve eating the steaming flesh of a just-killed animal or throwing it on a fire until it’s burned all to hell.

Just because something has been a certain way in the past does not make that way the best way to do it. The whole “abusive gamer asshatery online” thing has never made sense to me as being a main tenant of gaming (and this is coming from someone who has a gaming blog and has many gamer friends of all backgrounds who find abusive gamer behavior unpleasant and shitty as well).

When I was a kid, we would all gather around the old Gray Block computer and play Encarta Quest which was on Encarta 95 and Oregon Trail fever swept the school, causing the computer lab to be filled each recess.

Was it because both of these games were the bestest games in the universe? Nope. There are some “old games” that stand up after the test of time (Tetris, the Simpsons brawler arcade game, Mario, etc), but one of the main reasons we like a lot of new games even more as many “old classics” fall by the wayside is because they have more options and depth than ever before.

So why should we keep around abusive behavior and make excuses for it when the only people being served by normalizing abusive gamer behavior are the abusers?

Abusive behavior needs to be heavily discouraged, in all media. We’re playing games to have fun, not to be subject to every racial, bigoted, obscene word in the book. Whatever happened to “dang, nice shot” to your opponent when he shoots you midair, and the like?

Rage generation is swinging in full force…and I happen to live with one. It’s highly disturbing that young adults/pr to pre-teens talk and act like how they do online anywhere, and then always expect to never be talked to that way. Well how about you don’t act that way and maybe it’ll trickle down eventually to get back to a respectful generation?

…it’d be like somebody stealing from an elderly person with dementia and all of us going “oh it’s ok, that is just what everybody else is doing, therefore it must be right”

I think I’ll make a game where everyone is a shapeless, androgynous, grey blob, and the goal is to get the antagonists to herd with the rest of the shapeless, grey blobs. The grey blobs sort of amble about saying tolerance over and over whenever there are no antagonists present. The antagonists will of course be straight, white men. The overlord superbad antagonists will be Christian as well.

Whenever the herd encounters straight, white men saying anything that doesn’t conform to marxist critical theory, the herd moves in. Some of the greys hurl marshmellows containing hate speech laws at the insurgents. Some of the greys pray to the State for guidance while the rest of the greys chant tolerance, over and over again until the evil straight, white man becomes a shapeless, androgynous, grey blob as well.

When confronted with a super evil, straight, white, Christian man. The grey blobs turn into rainbow lions while the other grey blobs surround him. The rainbow lions spew butterflies from their mouths, which never cease to shut for long anyways. The evil terrorist man eventually disappears into a mist of flowers and unicorns. The game is won when the whole world is filled with shapeless, androgynous, grey blobs worshipping the state.

So how exactly are people harassing other gamers (in good fun) about being fat, short or Asian if only attention whore women are the ones ‘revealing’ their personal details (aka that they are not male. The horror, the horror).

The is something very off about how often women, even outside of gaming, are accused of wanting attention. The default is not being invisible until you need a menu or a memo taken, people.

Here’s an idea: act however you want when you are playing with people you know, who know you, and there is an established understanding of what’s expected/accepted within that social circle. But when you’re playing with people you don’t know, who don’t know you… well, consider that how you act is going to leave an immediate — and often lasting — impression of you that could cause those people never to want to play with you again. So, if you are interested in establishing yourself (and your clan or guild in games where these social structures exist) as mature, intelligent, and welcoming, act accordingly. If you have no desire to recruit other mature, intelligent players… continue to act like dumbass kids on the playground, spouting rude, racist, sexist bullshit, and don’t be surprised when those mature, intelligent players will have nothing to do with your shit.

@Nada, yes! And if you add in Steele whole shtick about how he’s oh-so-offended about being called “white dude” because he’s like, heard that women get offended by being called women, or something, but couldn’t suss out the details, because misandry!

Yeah, I play on XBox and had one man hitting on me. I thought (very stupidly) that saying I was only 14 years old (a lie) would get him to stop all the sexual harrassment. Actually? It VASTLY increased it.

The difference between someone calling you a sl*t on a video game, and someone mugging you is that the former is just a nuisance, and the latter is an actual crime. Male and female gamers have been successfully dealing with and ignoring the nuisances for years now. This whole “I’m a victim” thing is a recent phenomenon.

It’s almost laughable that you could actually compare the two.

I’m not excusing threats of rape. Obviously people who do that suck. The question is, given that it is going to happen, what are we going to do about it? Short of censoring people or using a heavy hand to punish offenders, there’s nothing that can be done. On the other hand, what feminists want to do is make gaming safe for women by removing any stereotypical depiction of women (exclusively) and generally making games less masculine.

I didn’t say that competition necessitates that people scream slurs at you. I said that competition tends to lead some people to do these things. It’s a sorry fact of the human condition that people will do these things. Your example of professional sports is poor, because fights often break out during games, and of course I don’t need to mention the riots that occur whether the home team wins or loses a soccer match. I’m sure more than a little harassment is involved in these instances.

The point of saying that men would move on to Game or some other less pleasant endeavor was to contrast being a PUA with being a dbag on a video game. Yes, men need outlets for their competitive and aggressive side, even the sh*tty harassing males. The point I was making is that what’s happening with video games isn’t actually bad, therefore why push them from that to something that is actually bad?

Felicia Day is a girl gamer not a Gamer Girl (someone trying to feminize gaming), and therefore isn’t a good example. There are women gamers who design games, or start up fan pages, or start clans or whatever. I’m not talking about them.

The point of gaming, for men, is competition. Obviously this doesn’t have to be racial slurs, I don’t use them myself. Some people just don’t know how to trash talk without resorting to the lowest common denominator. How do you stop them? Short of reporting them for their behavior, I just avoid them. What else are you going to do?

I’m not saying we have to accept the status quo. What I’m saying is that the feminist solution is no solution at all. Well, it will make gaming more pleasant for women who feel uncomfortable because someone asked to see their t*ts, but the alternative as I see it is to restrict developers from using stereotypical shorthands to represent women and to make gaming less about violent conflict and competition and more about cooperation and non-violent conflict resolution. We already have games like that, and if these women are really that uncomfortable in competitive games then it seems the simpler solution would be for them to avoid competitive games altogether. No one else but a tiny minority of women seems to be scarred and scared of playing online games so….go play something else. I get harassed all of the time, and I’ll report people, but it never occurred to me that the solution was to ruin the games I love. Some people just suck to deal with, and you can work to minimize their impact, yes, but you can’t get rid of them.

So, I guess I was epically owned by you, but I’m not sure that you’re seeing the point of my argument. Yes, harassment is a problem, but your solution is much worse. Of course, that assumes your solution is similar to Sarkeesian’s. What is your solution? Do you care to explain how it’s a better alternative?

The question is, given that it is going to happen, what are we going to do about it? Short of censoring people or using a heavy hand to punish offenders, there’s nothing that can be done.

You stupid fucker, do you honestly not understand the idea of social interaction? We don’t have to implement specific rules and punishments to reduce the instances of slurs being levelled against women, we just have to be willing to create a culture which doesn’t tolerate slurs. That means calling out douchebags who use slurs, and it means not whining about WIMMINZ STEALING MUH GAMES when people suggest that, hey, maybe you guys should ease up on the assholery.

The point of gaming, for men, is competition. Obviously this doesn’t have to be racial slurs, I don’t use them myself. Some people just don’t know how to trash talk without resorting to the lowest common denominator. How do you stop them? Short of reporting them for their behavior, I just avoid them. What else are you going to do?

GEE IF ONLY THERE WERE SOME WAY TO COMMUNICATE DISAPPROVAL WHAT A SHAME THAT HUMANITY NEVER DEVELOPED LANGUAGE

Also, I love your wishy-washy dishonest-as-fuck move of trying to pretend like it’s all about preserving competition and obviously slurs aren’t necessary but what can you do about them, oh well I guess we have to put up with them. Real smooth, dude, except anyone who’s paying attention will notice that you’ve already conceded slurs have nothing to do with being competitive, so retaining a culture which endorses the use of slurs has nothing to do with maintaining an air of competition. Fuck, man, at least own up to the fact that you really just want an excuse to be an oppressive shithead.

Is it just me or did Phil insinuate that if a female character is not dressed in something that barely meets the minimum fabric requirements for a chainmail bikini then a) no-one will be able to tell she is female, even if she has the other standard societal markers (e.g. boobs, higher vocal pitch, female pronouns) and b) this will lead to games based around no conflict and no violence, even though plently of female gamers do enjoy a good fight?

Persona games. Somehow, the female characters wear practical, everyday clothing (often School Uniforms, although I admit that whilst Mitsuru’s (P3) uniform is ‘acceptable uniform’, with her attitude it is somewhat fanservice-y) and people can tell that they’re female characters and also there are fights! Many fights! There’s also nonviolent conflict solving in the social links, for variety! And oh gods my grammar was bad in this comment…

Holy stereotypes, Batman. Look, not all men are into competition, and there’s plenty of non-men out there who love it. And there’s plenty of people who can get excited and competitive (and laugh at people’s, and your own, shittyness/bad luck) without resorting to harrassing or abusing other players. It’s not difficult.

Also, making gaming more inclusive for women isn’t going to turn every game into something non-violent or whatever. People who don’t like violent games are already not going to play them; they aren’t going to force their way into other genres and subgenres to “ruin” them. That’s why we have different genres – people play the ones they like and don’t play the ones they don’t, there’s enough different types of game for everyone to enjoy (and before any of the idiots/trolls say it: no, poor characterisation and stereotypes aren’t genres, you aren’t losing anything by including non-white, straight, male, etc, characters and treating them as actual humans). And there’s plenty of people who aren’t men, even people who are feminists, who like violent games.

You just have to look at how many Skyrim (hardly a passive, non-violent game) fans there are floating around here, in this post even, and how many of them are feminists (even feminist women). So your “gaming will become feminised!!11111eleventy” argument is absolute bullshit, not only for that but because you have a really fucked up concept of what’s “feminine” and what’s “masculine”.

But i’m not surprised you have no idea what feminism and inclusivity are about. You’re too busy complaining about the “wrong” kind of people invading your space. Claiming you don’t like the douchebags doesn’t change the fact that you’re still supporting them and their whining (and the current state of things).

Personally, i’m not going to lose any sleep if the douchebags feel driven out of their favourite hobby. They can, frankly, go fuck themselves. The rest of us will be over here enjoying it without all the shit.

Btw, to everyone that isn’t an arsehole, Guild Wars 2 is almost here! Anyone else going to be playing it? Also i’m really excited for Borderlands 2, only a little while longer for that too! :D

The idea that male gamers are involuntarily celibate forever-alone virgin nerds is perfectly consistent with the idea that female gamers are attention-seeking floozies, Cassandra, if rather than trying to get into the male gamers’ pants, as you say, the goal of the female gamers is to say, “Ha! You put in kindness coins in hopes that sex would fall out, sucker! Now I have all your coins and I am going to withhold sex from you! MWAHAHAHAHA!” Hope this helps.

One thing’s for certain. Men never complained that any online game was ruined or less enjoyable due to the harsh language during game play. Only women have demanded this. Clearly women are immensely ego centric and narcissistic. When the herd moves in, women demand the environment, whatever that may be, be changed to suit their whims. Everywhere in society women demand women friendly spaces and they demand men change it to suit them. Every woman here has confirmed this by demanding gaming change to suit them. A most distasteful flaw inherent to women.

Male and female gamers have been successfully dealing with and ignoring the nuisances for years now. This whole “I’m a victim” thing is a recent phenomenon.

Oh, so way back in the good old days of X-Box Live (5 years ago?), everybody ignored the harassment. Well, people are speaking up now about it, and game makers are listening to the problem, so it sounds like it’s going to make some positive changes in the gaming culture.

I’m not excusing threats of rape. Obviously people who do that suck. The question is, given that it is going to happen, what are we going to do about it? Short of censoring people or using a heavy hand to punish offenders, there’s nothing that can be done.

If you’re online and you hear someone use a racial slur or rape threat, speak up and let them know that kind of behavior is unacceptable. Let them feel unwanted and unwelcome rather than making women and people of color feel unwelcome.

On the other hand, what feminists want to do is make gaming safe for women by removing any stereotypical depiction of women (exclusively) and generally making games less masculine.

We’ve already explained that women also enjoy competition and mild trash talking. But you’re defending a culture of abusive behavior and saying that fighting it makes games less masculine. The men I know don’t like that kind of stuff either, so it’s not what all men want by a long shot.

I didn’t say that competition necessitates that people scream slurs at you. I said that competition tends to lead some people to do these things. It’s a sorry fact of the human condition that people will do these things. Your example of professional sports is poor, because fights often break out during games, and of course I don’t need to mention the riots that occur whether the home team wins or loses a soccer match. I’m sure more than a little harassment is involved in these instances.

It’s wrong for people to harass and fight each other over professional sports, and it’s wrong for video game players to verbally abuse and harass each other.

Yes, men need outlets for their competitive and aggressive side, even the sh*tty harassing males.

Oh, those poor little harassing males, they just need an outlet for their unjustified rage and entitlement! Why won’t women just accept being easy targets for these poor dears?

The point I was making is that what’s happening with video games isn’t actually bad, therefore why push them from that to something that is actually bad?

So if women refuse to tolerate abuse in the gaming culture, then they are to blame if those same harassing men do something worse? Wrong, that’s blaming the victim. The harassing men need to control their own behavior without harming other people, just like everybody else. They don’t deserve to have people be outlets for their rage.

We already have games like that, and if these women are really that uncomfortable in competitive games then it seems the simpler solution would be for them to avoid competitive games altogether. No one else but a tiny minority of women seems to be scarred and scared of playing online games so….go play something else

I don’t think the game makers really want abusive dipshits to scare away half of the gaming market. Let the harassers play something else. They’re the ones ruining it for everyone else.

I get harassed all of the time, and I’ll report people, but it never occurred to me that the solution was to ruin the games I love.

You just said that what’s happening in games isn’t that bad, and now you’re admitting that you too get harassed all the time? Obviously the problem is bad, then.

Yes, harassment is a problem, but your solution is much worse. Of course, that assumes your solution is similar to Sarkeesian’

How do you know what Sarkeesian’s solution is? She hasn’t made the video yet, FFS!
Here’s a solution. Call out the abusive players, report them, and make them know that if they want to play, they need to treat other people with some basic human decency.

Gamer Girls complain about representations of women, and this is highly hypocritical considering they never bother to mention that it’s equally as bad for men. For every sexy video game vixin, there’s a male cannon fodder soldier who’s a meathead that doesn’t show any emotions.

The number of sexy vixens and meathead male soldiers is not equal. Male characters are the default and outnumber female characters by a wide margin. You can’t do anything about it, either. What, are you going to have a World War II game with mixed male and female units that shower together?

Male characters are the default and outnumber female characters by a wide margin.

Your post looks like passive-aggressive butt-hurt snark, but this sentence is actually true.

So you can’t actually have meant it, O you of the men-are-so-oppressed comment.

I wonder what these comments look like after the Manboobzers read them through their filters.

You must have me confused with some MRA you have in your head. I didn’t say men are oppressed, and I do mean what I say. However, unlike feminists, I don’t think that female characters will ever achieve parity with male characters. You’ve heard that well-behaved women seldom make history? Well, women in general seldom make history. History doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.